Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Samantha Bee is Comedy Central's John Oliver, Jon Stewart

I've got to admit, I was never a huge fan of Samantha Bee on the Daily Show. Sure, she was funny. But next to correspondents like Jessica Williams, John Oliver, Aasif Mandvi, etc., she just didn't stand out like the others. To me, anyway.

Well, one of the benefits of being sick as hell is free time. So I've had a lot of free time these past days, which inevitably led to wasting time on the internet. I've seen a few clips from Bee's show before, and she had really impressed me. As in, way, way more than I ever expected her to. Yesterday I had a chance to see some more.

And, holy shit. She is really, really good. She's the John Oliver of Comedy Central. That's not to bash Trevor Noah. Not only does Salon have that well under control (because, let's face it, they do), but I like Noah, a lot. But his style of political humor is more political comedy-lite than the Daily Show used to be; he doesn't seem to dig as deep on most stories as Stewart did. It's the passing laugh, and then move on. Which personally I think is a loss to his show.

And it's also where Samantha Bee seems to be filling the void, bringing to CC what Oliver took to HBO. I'm really impressed.

Some of my favorite clips:

"There is no God at CPAC" ... where she does a better job covering atheists than I can remember Stewart ever doing (alas).

Bee, on the "Biden Rule":

On rape kits:

And then there's Ted Cruz:

So there's still more I haven't seen, but so far these are some of my favorites. And from what I'm seeing, Bee is on track to be Comedy Central's best voice on political comedy.